


Left of Heaven

by alex_emsworth



Category: Merry (Band)
Genre: M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 22:38:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1165408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alex_emsworth/pseuds/alex_emsworth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His last question almost made Tetsu choke; Gara’s first phrase that evening made Tetsu look at him as if he had never seen him before.</p><p>“Would you have anything to do with me if it weren’t for the band?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left of Heaven

_Beyond the reach of prying eyes  
His magic spelled the darkest delight;  
Never any order or routine to blind his way_

If anything, Gara had a talent for making things complicated; if they were already complicated, he would make them worse, and the easiest way to do it for him was talking.

His last question almost made Tetsu choke; Gara’s first phrase that evening made Tetsu look at him as if he had never seen him before.

_“Would you have anything to do with me if it weren’t for the band?”_  


—

Nobody knew much about Gara, and nobody could really know him: he wasn’t the type for heartfelt dialogs, and seemed to choose people he wanted to have around on the sole basis of being sure they would stay away.

He stayed away, too, as much as he could — but there was one night when Tetsu opened the door to his apartment to find Gara on the stairs, waiting. He didn’t even ring the doorbell, he just sat there, unlit cigarette in hand; Tetsu had no way of telling how much time he’d already spent there, or how much more he would, and he doubted it that if he didn’t come out to walk his dog he would be aware of this visit at all. But there they were, on the poorly lit stairwell, and Tetsu offered, deadpan and matter-of-factly, “Care to join me?” — and Gara did.

It grew into a habit somehow; Gara could come every other day for a week or two, and he could ignore the very existence of Tetsu’s place for months. There was no logic, no matter how hard Tetsu searched for it, no matter how desperate he was for even the smallest of hints. He came to cherish these visits and he came to anticipate them, and when he spent his evenings alone he never turned music up loud anymore, in hope for a soft, unsteady knock that was Gara’s substitute for ringing the bell.

Perplexed, Tetsu always let him in and let him do whatever he wanted: for Gara there was even an exception to his rule of no smoking in the rooms, which he otherwise followed with an almost manic obsession. The smell of Gara’s tobacco soaked into his things and his walls, and even after washing his hair Tetsu could swear there was a hint of it underneath the sickening, chemical odor of shampoo. It was comforting, a reminder that he was special enough for Gara to spend time with him, and for a while Tetsu tried to convince himself that that would suffice, but it never truly did.

He came home once to find Gara at his door again, cold and tired — and he even earned a faint smile from the vocalist as an award for coming: a wordless “thank you” and “I’ve been waiting” that he would feed on for days to come. Gara’s offerings were few, and Tetsu clung onto all of them with desperate ferocity; he imagined that if he allowed himself to dream sometimes, his dreams would somehow seep into reality, and maybe he could build himself another life where Gara’s smiles and his warmer tone and the softest brush of his shoulder against Tetsu’s when he sat a little too close to him at an interview were not a trick of his imagination, a life where he didn’t curse himself for being so pathetically in love, a life where he didn’t have to pretend that he wasn’t thrilled to see Gara’s scarily thin, half-naked body at their concerts — a life where he could give him something more than sickeningly strong coffee and a place to hide in when he had nowhere else to go.

That night he gave him a set of spare keys to his apartment; “I want you to have this,” he uttered, placing the keys into his hand, knowing that he would never use them — yet when Gara nodded with a faint “Okay” a spark of hope ignited in him again, and there was only so much he could do not to ruffle the vocalist’s hair. 

It was a terrible, wrong affection he had no strength or will to fight.

When he found balance between his illusions and awkwardness, sitting next to Gara on the floor of his small room, listening to music with him or gently tugging at the strings of his bass while the other man scribbled something in his notebook or sung his soft, beautiful songs, became pleasant and felt like home. On rare occasions they would talk; it was an act so intimate that Tetsu was almost afraid to move, and every word that fell off Gara’s lips burned into his subconscious, a tamed thunder in the quiet darkness that lurked between the listening walls.

Rainy nights were the best; on rainy nights Gara would whisper his poetry while Tetsu poured him white tea with the cold precision of a surgeon, and they would watch the shadows of phantom trees disturbed by the merciless water dance as the never-changing, unforgiving night claimed its rights.

On a night like this, a steady downpour raging in the streets, Tetsu found it in himself to drop it almost like he didn’t care, only a nervous shudder he couldn’t suppress giving him away, “It would be nice if you stayed sometime,” — and Gara, his coat already on his shoulders and a red umbrella in his hand, told him before he left, “Maybe next time,” — only to disappear for another month. 

He did stay once, though; there was no way for Tetsu to question Gara’s decisions, so when he got up to walk his dog and the vocalist barely acknowledged this fact by glancing up from a book into his direction, he had no choice but to tell him to lock the door if he left, and was sure that he would return to an empty apartment. Yet when he came back there was light on and the smell of food in the air, backed up by Gara’s thin frame, hands folded on his chest all but defensively. The words of “You don’t eat well, and I felt like making dinner” sounded so ridiculous that Tetsu wanted to laugh, but the fear of scaring Gara with his unexpected kindness off was so great that he could afford only a smile. It wasn’t the first time they ate together, and the dinner was brief and pleasant, but Tetsu couldn’t shake off the weird pride of being worthy of Gara’s efforts, no more than he could wipe a smile off his face, and a hint of it never left his lips. To make up for the meal and get his hands on something he did the dishes, waiting for water to heat for the tea they would not drink. When he came back into the room he found Gara at the window, no light on, and he was ashamed for making so much noise in the kitchen and disturbing his silence; his dark silhouette looked frail and broken, more than ever, and the only thing Tetsu could think of doing was coming up to him to hug him from behind and hide him from whatever could harm him, but he stopped only a moment before his fingers touched Gara’s shoulder, and a hug turned into a soft brush of skin on skin. Gara looked at him with a start, his eyes glistening in the smooth gray moonlight that flowed through the gap between the curtains.

“It’s late,” barely a whisper, more of a shared thought; a nod from Gara, a steady sound of the hideous jazz streaming from the speakers — a CD that Yuu had given him so long ago and that he never brought himself to listen to, a CD that he never minded listening to if it was Gara’s wish. His blind acceptance stripped him of any pride he had left, but it was something he came to find comfort in — it was something he chose to sacrifice, and it only made him laugh now; he would give away so much more in return for Gara falling asleep on his shoulder and then finding refuge in his lap, breathing ever so lightly. If it meant being able to stroke Gara’s hair every night he could put up with listening to whatever Yuu chose to feed him.

His mistake was telling Yuu that, though, even if it was only in the form of a thank you, and in Nero’s presence, on top of that; that was the day he learned by the weird looks the other members gave him that he was the only one graced by Gara’s presence, and made a mental note not to use a plural preposition ever again — and never, never return Yuu anything if he didn’t ask for it.

It was a small mistake, but it came back to haunt him, to trap him in his thoughts that used to console him; Gara’s visits ceased again, and when he grew thinner than usual, his gestures twitchy and his shoulders sunken, Tetsu was the one Nero urged to talk to him, as if he didn’t know that there was no talking to Gara if he set his mind on something. His small mistake led to them sitting in a small restaurant, Gara looking grim and Tetsu having no idea what wonders Nero expected of him; it led to Gara asking weird questions, and the fact that they needed to do something about the maze they put themselves in didn’t make anything easier.

He hesitated, trying to think of a better answer than an eager “yes” in its many variations, and it showed — just like it showed that they needed another drink.

“Of course,” he finally admitted in the smallest of voices; with Gara involved, words that would otherwise be simple acquired peculiar meanings, and simple words were the only tools at Tetsu’s disposition. “Would you?” He asked — and prepared for the worse, tired of solving riddles and waiting for a permission to continue, his senseless joy that of a masochist.

“Yes,” Gara’s voice was no more than an exhalation, and this time Tetsu couldn’t hold back a laugh, relieved and almost hysterical.

“I’m glad we met,” he said — the only thing he could do not to do something stupid instead, like kissing Gara in the heat of the moment. Or telling him he loved him. Or even taking his bony hand in his. He wondered if that would change anything for the better since words did them no good.

Probably not, Tetsu concluded with a sigh, and gestured for more sake.

It was only in the taxi that their usual silence grew unnaturally heavy, something that had never happened in the past few years; when Gara slipped out of the car and slammed the door shut he leaned in to lock his eyes on Tetsu’s — and instead of saying yes to an invitation he was probably never going to receive again, the bassist asked, doing what was right and what was probably the stupidest thing in his life, his self-destruction remarkable and his stupidity unchallenged,

“And where would that take us?”

There was a poisonous pause — and after a few seconds Gara’s hands lifted from the door.

“Good night, Gara,” Tetsu whispered almost as an afterthought, his voice shaking and his eyes sadder than ever; when there came no answer, the taxi took him away from Gara and his devastating silence.

His revelations always struck him at the most inconvenient of moments, and his _“Fuck!”_ , followed by a shout of _“Stop the car”_ , should have been so loud and the blow he delivered to the door so powerful that the taxist slammed the brakes so hard the tires squealed and the old car swayed on the road before it came to a halt.

“What in the bloody hell is wrong with me, honestly?” He moaned to nobody in particular, his shaking hands struggling with his wallet, “Nero is going to kill me now,” he told the taxist, getting out of the car, which was hard for him and would probably look funny under other circumstances, but neiter he nor the driver were in the mood for a laugh.

He gave the man a crispy banknote and didn’t even feel sorry for him when he stormed off. They couldn’t have gotten further than a couple of blocks away from Gara’s apartment building, but he was so lost that it could as well be a hundred miles away, somewhere nowhere, and the stairs were a torture; when he got to the door he vaguely remembered as Gara’s he had no idea what he was doing anymore, years of cold-hearted control slipping away as he banged at the door, bellowing for Gara to let him in, all but falling when the door he leaned on to catch his breath for a moment opened before him into the abyss of Gara’s apartment, the owner himself standing in the doorframe, barefoot and wearing nothing but his old jeans that threatened to fall off his bones.

“Let me in? Please?” Tetsu’s throat was sore, and his hoarse whisper wasn’t too persuasive, but Gara stepped aside, and when the bassist brushed past him he almost fell over.

Inside, his courage and adrenaline went out, leaving him clueless and broken again, eager to meet Gara’s eyes, ashamed and in love and wondering where all that came from.

“I am sorry,” he said finally, resorting to words again because talking was still less scary than acting, “I shouldn’t have left. I am so sorry,” he whispered, reaching out to touch Gara’s cheekbone, a desperate gesture he was sure would make the other man flinch, but instead the vocalist closed his eyes and leaned in, seeking contact with Tetsu’s cold fingers,

“Why are you doing this to me,” a statement, not a question, his lips brushing ever so slightly against Tetsu’s palm, words only an excuse, a substitute for a shy kiss, “Why did it take you so long.”

“You weren’t obvious enough,” Tetsu whispered back, a nervous smile crawling into his words, “And I am very, very slow.”

“I know,” Gara smiled, too, his own fingers overlapping Tetsu’s, bringing his hand closer to his lips, planting soft kisses on each of his knuckles. 

“I love you,” a murmur, a step forward, his arms shaking when he embraced what Gara tried to pass off for a body, cutting off another _“I know”_ with a kiss. 


End file.
